«Dynamo» — «Shakhtar» — 1:1. Post-match press conference. Shovkovsky: «A good result, considering the flow of the game» (VIDEO)

On Sunday, October 27, in the match of the 11th round of the Ukrainian championship, Kyiv’s «Dynamo» drew 1:1 with Donetsk’s «Shakhtar». The match took place in Kyiv at the Dynamo Stadium named after Valeriy Lobanovskyi. We present to your attention the post-match press conference of the head coach of the capital team, Oleksandr Shovkovskyi.

— It is difficult to prepare when, firstly, you have to play every two days, and secondly, with such logistics that we travel to and from matches for one and a half days.

We deliberately split our return from Rome to Kyiv into two stages to conduct at least some training preparation. Therefore, on Friday morning, we flew to Lublin, settled in a hotel, had lunch, after which the team had about two and a half hours to rest. Then the players who were in the starting lineup for the match against «Roma» stayed at the hotel for recovery activities, while the others went to training. Which, of course, cannot be called full-fledged. After that, we had dinner, and then we boarded the bus, reached Chełm, where we departed for Kyiv by train at 11 p.m. We arrived at our club yesterday at around 12:30.

I shared all this so that you understand the condition our players were in on the eve of today’s match.

«Shakhtar» had two days more because they played their European cup match on Tuesday. And that affected the flow of the game. We understood perfectly well that today we would lack freshness, so we relied on positional play in defense and looked for opportunities in counterattacking actions. Some things worked out, some did not. At the beginning of the match, there was a forced substitution, Popov went to the infirmary, where he joined Yarmolenko, Pikhalenko, and Sebalyos. How serious it all is will be shown by tomorrow's medical examination.

— Why didn’t Shaparenko appear on the field today?

— Unfortunately, this morning he received a domestic injury, he got three stitches, and he could not go onto the football field.

— Karavaev is the hero of the match. Did you congratulate him on the goal?

— Of course, we congratulated him and the whole team. This goal is the result of effective actions. The ball must first be delivered to the flank, then sent into the penalty area, then be in the right place, and finally put the final point. We are working on this. Sometimes it all works out. We constantly tell players how to better build attacking actions, how to build defensive actions, how to shift, how to interact in lines, on the flanks.

But nevertheless, fatigue accumulates. You had to see the players to understand the state they were in just yesterday.

You can criticize me, say whatever you want about me, but many coaches and players pay attention to this schedule, to this number of matches. And those players who play for their national teams are working without any rest at all.

So, I repeat, we lacked freshness today. Therefore, Karavaev’s goal was indeed very important. Considering the course of events on the football field, it can be said that a draw is a good result for us.

Post-match press conference of the head coach of «Shakhtar» Marino Pushić

Oleksandr POPOV from Dynamo Stadium named after Valeriy Lobanovskyi